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The NFL Playoff Schedule for the 2026 Season: How It Works and What's Already Set

NFL October 26, 2026 By Andrew

In January the NFL schedule stops being something you can plan months ahead and becomes something you plan days ahead. Matchups, kickoff times and networks for each round come out only after the previous round ends. The dates of each round are already set, though, and so are the rules for who plays whom.

Here's what's officially known about the postseason for the 2026 season, which runs into early 2027, and what stays TBD until the games are played. All times are Eastern.

The field: 14 teams, seven per conference

The NFL's 2026 schedule announcement confirms the format is the same as in recent seasons. Seven teams from the AFC and seven from the NFC make the playoffs:

Seeds 1–4: the four division winners, ordered by record.
Seeds 5–7: the three non-division winners with the best records (the wild cards).

Division winners are always seeded 1–4, even if a wild-card team has a better record. So a wild card with more wins can still have to travel to a division champion in the first round. Last season's Wild Card schedule had exactly that pairing: the No. 5 Rams at the No. 4 Panthers. Detroit proposed seeding by record in 2025, but NFL.com reported the Lions withdrew the proposal at that spring's league meeting, and the 2026 schedule release still describes the division-winners-first format.

When teams finish with the same record, the NFL's published tiebreaking procedures decide the order. I've summarized those in our schedule guide, so I won't repeat them here.

Who gets a bye

Only the No. 1 seed in each conference gets a first-round bye. Everyone else plays on Wild Card Weekend. That's why the race for the top seed matters so much in December. It's worth a week off and home field for as long as that team stays alive.

How each round is paired

Wild Card round (six games). In each conference:

No. 2 hosts No. 7
No. 3 hosts No. 6
No. 4 hosts No. 5

Divisional round (four games). The bracket isn't fixed. After the Wild Card games, the No. 1 seed hosts the lowest remaining seed, and the other two winners play each other, with the higher seed at home. That's how USA Today describes the format, which it calls "dynamic." It also means the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds can't face the No. 1 seed before the conference championship. So you can't map your team's whole path in advance. It depends on which seeds win the first weekend.

Conference championships (two games). The two remaining teams in each conference meet, and the higher seed hosts.

Super Bowl. The AFC and NFC champions meet at a pre-announced neutral site.

The officially announced dates

These come from the NFL's 2026 schedule announcement and the league's 2026-27 important-dates calendar:

Round	Date(s)	Games	Matchups / times / networks
Week 18 (regular-season finale)	Sat., Jan. 9 – Sun., Jan. 10, 2027	16	Set after Week 17 (see below)
Wild Card Weekend	Sat., Jan. 16 – Mon., Jan. 18, 2027	6	TBD
Divisional Playoffs	Sat., Jan. 23 – Sun., Jan. 24, 2027	4	TBD
AFC & NFC Championship Games	Sun., Jan. 31, 2027	2	TBD
Super Bowl LXI	Sun., Feb. 14, 2027	1	SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, Calif.; ESPN and ABC; kickoff time TBD

Some details on the bottom row. The NFL's schedule release lists ESPN as the Super Bowl LXI network and calls it the ninth time the league's final game will be played in Los Angeles. ESPN says the game will also be simulcast on ABC and stream in the ESPN app. I haven't seen an official league announcement of the kickoff time, so I'm treating that as TBD.

Which network carries which playoff game before the Super Bowl hasn't been officially announced for this postseason, as far as I can find. Those assignments usually come out with each round's matchups. To show the timing, last season the NFL announced the full Wild Card schedule, with sites, dates, times and networks, on Jan. 4, 2026, the same day the regular season ended. That release said the Divisional schedule would follow the next weekend. That schedule included a Prime Video game and games on FOX, CBS, NBC and ESPN/ABC. I wouldn't assume the same split this year until the league confirms it.

Planning takeaway: pencil in the whole Saturday-through-Monday of Wild Card Weekend, Saturday and Sunday of the Divisional round, and the full Sunday of championship weekend. Exact windows won't be known until the previous round is over. For Wild Card Weekend, that's the night the regular season ends.

The Week 18 quirk

Week 18 is the only regular-season week the NFL schedules at the last minute. In May, all you know is the 16 matchups. All 16 games are division matchups, and the NFL says that's been true of the final week for 17 straight seasons. The day, kickoff time and network of each game are left open.

Here's how it works this season, per the NFL:

Saturday, Jan. 9: three games at 1 p.m. (Netflix), 4:30 p.m. (ESPN/ABC) and 8 p.m. (ESPN/ABC).
Sunday, Jan. 10: the rest, in the 1 p.m. and 4:25 p.m. afternoon windows, plus one Sunday night game (8:20 p.m.).
No Monday night game in Week 18. The league says this gives it more flexibility in scheduling the opening weekend of the playoffs.
Which game goes where is announced after Week 17 ends. The league picks games with playoff stakes for the standalone slots. The two ESPN/ABC Saturday games, in the NFL's words, are "games with playoff implications."

The idea, as the league describes it, is to make more final-week games matter for the playoffs. Setting the slots late lets the NFL put the games with the most at stake in the standalone windows.

In practice, Week 17 has a Monday night game (ESPN televises one every Monday in Weeks 1–17), so the week doesn't finish until Monday, Jan. 4. Week 18's schedule follows, and three of its games are played that Saturday, Jan. 9. If you're trying to attend or plan around a Week 18 game, that's less than a week's notice.

Late-season flexing also starts well before Week 18. Under the NFL's 2026 flexible scheduling procedures, Sunday Night Football can be flexed in any week from 11–17, generally with at least six days' notice in Weeks 14–17. Monday and Thursday games can also be flexed later in the season. The whole back half of December is softer than it looks on the original schedule.

Super Bowl LXI at a glance

Date: Sunday, Feb. 14, 2027 (Valentine's Day, which the Seahawks' write-up of the league calendar notes is the Sunday of Presidents' Day weekend)
Venue: SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, Calif.
Network: ESPN, per the NFL's schedule announcement, simulcast on ABC per ESPN
Kickoff time: TBD (not yet confirmed by the league as far as I can find)

The conference championships are Jan. 31, and, in the NFL's words, the winners "meet two weeks later" in the Super Bowl.

How I'd plan your January

Block the round dates now. Jan. 16–18, Jan. 23–24, Jan. 31 and Feb. 14 are fixed.
Treat Week 18 like a playoff round. Plan for all of Jan. 9–10 until the schedule drops.
Check the night each round ends. That's when the next round's matchups, and usually its times and networks, start coming out.
Think about the Prime Video question. Last postseason, one Wild Card game streamed on Prime Video. If that happens again, make sure you have Prime Video, or check whether a local station in your market is carrying it.

A printed January schedule will be out of date within days, so for the playoffs I'd lean on a live listing. On One Page Season, the season builder, team pages and printable PDFs cover the regular season through Week 18, because playoff games depend on qualification. Once matchups are announced, the weekly lists on our NFL page and games page follow ESPN's listings, so playoff games show up there with their kickoff times and networks.

Sources

Times, TV assignments and prices can change; check the linked sources and providers before you plan or pay. Commentary is our own. Send a correction if you spot an error.